The Belle Complex

As Disney fandom increasingly moves toward the mainstream, the discussions and questions that travel around the community become increasingly nuanced and diverse. Is the true color of Aurora's dress blue or pink? Is it more fun to sit in the back or the front on Big Thunder Mountain? Is the company's continued emphasis on producing content for Disney+ negatively impacting not only their output but the landscape for theatrical release as a whole? 

However, on two things, the fandom is eternally united. First, Gargoyles was a masterpiece in television storytelling and should have experienced a much longer run than it did. Second, Belle's prom dress in the 2017 remake was just insulting.

    While overwhelmingly successful at the box office, the 2017 adaptation is also a bruise for many in the Disney community. Even right out the gate, the film came under fire for a myriad of factors: the auto-tuned soundtrack, Ewan McGregor's flimsy accent, the distracting plot additions, its slavish devotion to Cinema Sins pedantry, the whiplash pacing, the juvenile dialogue, etc. The length of the list speaks betrays a certain laziness that clouded the development of this film--we could go on for a while about this film's shoddiness and what it says about Disney's decaying spirit--but I’m not really going to get into any of those with this piece. My biggest issue is a little more foundational. I want to talk about how this film presents Belle as a character.

    The titular beauty in this fairy-tale holds a special place in pop culture. Disney’s Belle occupies the thin overlap between princess culture and internet age feminism--the one Disney Princess that critics can't bring themselves to hate. And Belle is a beloved character for a reason. She's a hallmark of virtue, compassion, and bravery. She's a perfectly fine character to want to explore and celebrate. But the 2017 remake builds off this reservoir in the worst possible way. 

    The worst thing about this remake is how it cashes in on the audience’s impulse to see their own reflection in a character like Belle, to imagine that they too are always the smartest person in the room, that their own innate goodness is hindered only by their mundane surroundings which are not worthy of them.

    This attitude doesn't come from nowhere, so I want to start by exploring why a certain crowd treats Belle like the saving grace of the Disney Princess line. From there, I want to talk about the creative choice that most informed the development of this movie: the casting of Emma Watson. We'll then have a brief discussion on the relationship between character flaws and character arcs. And then we'll finally tally all the ways that the remake sabotages its story with its excessive infatuation with "the first good Disney Princess."

 

“The First Good Disney Princess”

       A lot of what makes Belle Belle can be attributed to Linda Woolverton, who wrote most of the screenplay for the animated film, and this was back when animated films were only just starting to have screenplays at all. A lot of Belle’s most signature features came from Woolverton, who was really excited by the idea of creating a “modern” princess. Woolverton has listed Jo March of Little Women as inspiration for writing Belle, especially as portrayed in the 1933 film adaptation with Katherine Hepburn. In her words,

“In the past we’ve seen that other animated heroines were reacting to outside forces. Belle isn’t like that. She initiates action. She sets things in motion. What is great about her, I think, is that she shows us all that women don’t have to sit around and wait.”

    In the traditional telling of the fairy-tale, the Beast sets the deal where the merchant’s daughter takes his place, a deal which is set without Belle’s knowledge or consent. It was Woolverton’s idea that Belle not only set out to find her father but also bargain to take her father’s place herself. Belle also helped popularize being well-read as a virtue for young girls, another addition by Woolverton. In short, Belle did a lot to present Disney Princesses, and female characters in general, as active agents who enact change within their own lives and the systems they occupy.

   But the discourse around Belle isn't just that she's a fully developed female character, or even just "my favorite Disney Princess." There is an equal and opposite reaction in all things. Belle isn't just a good role model, she's a better role model than the other Disney princesses.

   For all its popularity with its demographic, the Disney Princess© line has been slammed with criticism basically since day one. Characters like Jasmine and Aurora receive a lot of pushback from the critics of the line who claim these characters perpetuate limiting gender norms onto impressionable girls, and so it became widely acceptable to hate on Disney Princesses as a group--except for Belle. Belle is really the only princess, at least of the original members, who seems to escape the fire. 

    Interrogating the validity of these arguments against the Disney princess requires a lot more space and depth than what I can provide in this essay, but as a bedrock claim, we must recognize that for many individuals, Belle is the only “good” Disney Princess, or at least the first ...

   We all know how desperately Disney chases the crowd who hates Disney Princesses, so rather than thoughtfully countering the criticisms lobbed at their property, Disney caters to this crowd and really plays up the angle of Belle being this divine substance. As an example, the Broadway adaptation, premiering less than three years after the animated film, adds a few expendable lines for the servants about how cool it is to have such a spunky leading lady. These additions are somewhat unnecessary but mostly harmless. We'll see much more desperate bids for validation when we hit the remake ... Moving on.

    In the wake of the Disney Princess backlash of the early 2000s, this sort of dialogue became a tagline for Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” and Belle specifically, which certainly carried to the development of the 2017 remake. Belle wasn’t your typical Disney Princess, she was a princess for today.

             An Entertainment Today article promoting the remake proclaimed,

“Belle looked to broader horizons, declaring how deeply she wanted ‘adventure in that great wide somewhere.’ She confided to a passing sheep during her opening song that she enjoyed reading about Prince Charming, but she never said she expected—or even wanted—a prince as a suitor. It would be nice to have someone who understood her dreams, but she didn’t need a nobly born husband to realize her goals. She’d choose a library over a palace.”

    Critics of the Disney fairy-tale try to have their cake and eat it with this story. They argue Belle is above such pettiness as princes and castles even though she ends up with both of those things. This brings up the question of whether those are such awful things for young girls to desire anyways, and it only represents one of many contradictions in the Belle conversation.

   Another track you often see with this narrative is that Belle and Beast’s relationship is so much more developed than any other Princess romance. Critics of the genre point to this film and say things like, “isn’t it nice to have a Disney Princess who actually gets to know the guy before marrying him?” but the film doesn’t exactly trek in the nitty-gritty of nurturing a romantic relationship. There isn’t an episode where Belle tells Beast, “Honey, I thought I told you to wipe your paws on the foyer mat,” and Beast reacts with “but dear, the foyer mat’s a jerk,” and they both have a grown-up conversation about managing their expectations of each other. 

    What little we do see of their courtship, mostly during the “Something There” number, is romantic shorthand. We see them reading together, having dinner, feeding the birds, etc. There’s also only about a ten-minute gap between Belle thanking the Beast for saving her life and the two of them walking down the stairs to go on their little ballroom date. (Measuring by the extended edition with the “Human Again” number, then it comes to about fifteen minutes, yet even then, Belle and Beast themselves only get about a minute of extra screentime here.) But we don’t know how long this translates to in-universe. This could be a few months, it could just be the weekend. There’s not a lot in the text itself that distinguishes Belle and Beast’s romance from that of Ariel and Eric or Cinderella and the Prince. This is true of a lot of the makeup of Belle’s character: at first glance she appears to be this unique substance who “isn’t like other girls,” but this is mostly projection. 

    No part of me is saying any of this to dunk on Belle. The fairy-tale picture of romance is popular for a reason, and Belle is not a lesser princess because she plays by this same rule book. But as critics consistently center the narrative on Belle as being “not your average Princess,” they not only distort the film, but they also confess their distaste for something they haven’t bothered to understand.

             And what better place to start talking about Emma Watson?

 

I Promise I Don’t Hate Emma Watson

    You probably remember where you were when you first heard that Emma Watson would be portraying Disney’s Belle in a live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast. Finally, the thing that crossover fanart had been praying for since 2001 was happening!

    This was huge news and united fandoms of all faiths. As Nicholas Barber wrote for The Guardian in February 2017, “Never before has there been such continuity between an actress’s online persona and her two most iconic roles.” The movie was going to be a hit either way, but had this role gone to any other actress, and I’m counting Emilia Clarke grade stars, I doubt very much that the remake’s success would have been earthshattering.

             Now, before I start blaming Emma Watson for ruining the remake, I want to acknowledge both her talents as an actress and her contributions to feminism as a whole. In addition to her role as Hermione, Watson’s most well-known for activist work advocating for women’s rights. Her famous “He For She” address in 2014 is especially notable for calling on men to be active agents in the fight for gender equality. It’s not a slight against Emma Watson as a performer, activist, or human being to say that she should have never been a Disney Princess.

            Watson was nothing if not grateful to be playing Belle, but her enthusiasm appears to be isolated to that specific princess. Watson was also famously offered the title role in Disney’s remake of Cinderella, which premiered shortly after Watson’s casting as Belle was announced, a role which she declined. As far as I know, Watson has never outright said “it was my feminist duty to turn down Cinderella,” but it’s kind of there in the subtext. Explaining why she chose to play Belle but not Cinderella, she shared,

“There’s this kind of outsider quality that Belle had, and the fact she had this really empowering defiance of what was expected of her. In a strange way, she challenges the status quo of the place she lives in, and I found that really inspiring … that’s the kind of woman I would want to embody as a role model, given the choice.”

       And this is pretty consistent with how she discusses fairy-tale lore across all the film's promotional material. For example, in her views on “love at first sight,” she shares:  

“That is a big problem with a lot of fairy-tales. A lot of traditionally written fairy-tales have it where the girl just gives up her entire existence and everything that’s important to her for 'some guy'.”

    It must be acknowledged that Watson is, regrettably, not at all unique in her view of the Disney Princess mythology. Lots of celebrities, even those employed by Disney, have gone on record dismissing characters like Cinderella. Keira Knightley, Mindy Kaling, and Kristen Bell are just the top of the list. I guess not every person employed by the Mouse can be expected to first earn their degree in Disney lore, but quotes like these often make me wonder why such people would want to sign their name to brand of a company they don't respect ... 

             I’ve said it before: there’s nothing wrong with not liking Disney films. It’s not for everybody. They're welcome to stay in their own corner of the club. And yet this is the crowd that somehow ends up guiding most of the discourse around the fandom, which perpetuates a cycle of needlessly shaming fans for worshiping at the wrong pop culture temple, and that’s without digging into how reductive or even fallacious the discourse around the Disney Princesses gets. (I’m not kidding—I really will write that essay someday!) Given that the film was sold as a project for Emma Watson, it’s a wonder we ever expected the film to be anything but self-loathing and incoherent.

          If I lay blame on Emma Watson for ruining this movie, it's largely because she's taken credit for it. Watson shared in an interview, “I definitely had issues with the script at the beginning … We tried to tweak things to make Belle more proactive and a bit more in charge of her own destiny.”

    We only know of a few confirmed instances of Watson influencing the project. We know for example, that Watson championed Belle’s washing machine, the one that only shows up long enough to remind the audience that they should support women in the STEM field by purchasing Belle dolls and is never mentioned again. Watson also had influence over Belle’s wardrobe, including having Belle wear boots instead of ballet shoes and passing on wearing a corset. 

    There's also a half dozen or so small adjustments from the animated film that I can’t be certain were Watson’s doing, but they seem to fit the bill of the princess she wanted to play. I wonder, for example, whose idea it was to have The Beast lay down a very specific stipulation that “once this door closes, it will not open again” and have Belle toss her father out of the cell and locking herself in so she could take his place. Is this what they thought the animated film was missing? Did they think Belle’s independence would be lost on us if they didn’t contrive a way for her to literally chuck the patriarchy on the ground?

             I want to clarify that the headlining star (in this case Emma Watson) exerting influence on their project beyond just their on-camera performance isn’t anything new and not itself the thing that’s so bothersome. When a project is designed around a specific star, that star is sometimes privileged with creatively shaping the project beyond just their performance. In A Star is Born, Lady Gaga is the one who insisted to Bradley Cooper that the singing for the soundtrack all be captured live. (This, in addition to writing like half of the songs in the movie.) There is a precedent for this kind of thing. That said, Watson did feel comfortable reshaping a generationally beloved property after her own tastes, and so I think it’s fair to ask whether her efforts to make Belle a "better role model" actually benefited the story.

    But we're getting ahead of ourselves. What do we even mean when we talk about role models?

Flaws, Arcs, and Role Models

          I want to talk about role models in relation to character arcs because, in a way, the two are kind of at odds. We could argue for a while about semantics, but for the intents of this essay, let's decide a role model has no need for a character arc because they don't have a flaw to overcome.

         Most films center on a character who is lacking some virtue or truth. As an example, Lady Bird follows a high-school senior, Christine McPherson “Lady Bird,” whose self-made moniker is just a token of her adolescent hunger for independence. Lady Bird is spirited and thinks outside of the box, but she can also be self-obsessed and inconsiderate. Lady Bird spends most of the film hoping to get as far away from her rundown Sacramento community as she can, and this often manifests in her being overly dismissive or even rude to her support systems, especially her mother. Lady Bird’s character arc has her learning how to assert herself into the world while also learning to appreciate where she comes from. Paradoxically, opening her eyes to the beauty and complexity of her community is what grants her the inner peace that's eluded her.

    "Lady Bird" isn't what most would consider a "role model," but she's a fantastic character, and she owes a lot of this to her rough edges. Without them, you just have a movie about a girl marking time until she graduates from high school. Without them, she'd miss the thrill of discovery that comes with growth and maturation.

    Knowing what we do about character arcs, would we say Belle has one?

                I think the answer is no. Belle knows who she is from when we meet her, and she doesn’t really have to undergo any kind of change to reach her happy ending. If there is any kind of revelation here, it's that there are spaces where she can feel at home, which has nothing to do with changing worldviews or behaviors. In short, Belle has no character flaw. I’ve seen some commenters try to assign growth or flaws to Belle to try humanizing her—I guess Belle intruding on the Beast’s private space wasn’t very nice—but none of them have been able to articulate what really changes about Belle except her environment.

   So is there space, then, for characters like Belle who don’t have arcs? Well, such stories are harder to pull off, but you can still tell a meaningful story about a character who doesn't need to grow.

           One of the best examples comes from the 1950 film Harvey. The film follows James Stewart playing a mild-mannered gentleman, Elwood P Dowd, whose best friend is an invisible six-foot tall rabbit named Harvey. His family is endlessly embarrassed by this little character quirk, and much of the film centers around them trying to get him committed to a mental institution.

    The central conceit of the film is that even though everyone thinks that Stewart’s character is “insane,” he understands more than any of the “normal” people who try to have him locked up. Ironically, their efforts to contain him generally end with them making fools of themselves. When people interact with Dowd, and even when they learn about Harvey, they remember him more for his unflinching kindness than for his peculiarities. Dowd’s mental curiosity is a sort of metaphor for the way that a society obsessed with status and appearance views genuine kindness as a mental ailment, and we the audience walk away from the film wanting to emulate Dowd.

           There’s a parallel to be drawn between a character like Belle and a character like Dowd. Had Harvey been a musical, I’m certain the opening number would have had James Stewart strolling through town while everyone remarks what a funny gentleman he is. Important note, though: Dowd is the focus of our attention, but he's not the character we, the audience, see ourselves in. The protagonist and the audience-insert aren't always the same person.

           The Shawshank Redemption is a solid example of this phenomenon. This film follows the friendship between two prisoners in the Shawshank prison, Red and Andy. Red has been imprisoned for decades when Andy is interned, and Red thinks this new guy is going to crack under the strain of prison life, but Andy won’t go down so easily. Red eventually figures out that he kinda likes this new guy. The two become friends and take steps to make Shawshank a less terrible place.

   Even without the audience’s context that Andy is innocent of the crime he is being punished for, it’s clear he doesn’t really belong in a place like Shawshank. Like Belle, Andy seems to be the personification of goodness itself, and this gives our investment in him a sense of urgency. If he can survive the abuse of the prison system, maybe goodness can overcome all things. As such, the main tension of the film comes from whether or not Shawshank is eventually going to extinguish his light.

             In this film, who’s the main character? Most would say it’s Andy. The movie begins with his imprisonment in Shawshank, he’s the one actively bettering the lives of those around him, and the plot’s tension revolves around what will happen to him. But who’s the one with the character arc? The answer is clearly Red. He’s the one with the character flaw that he gets to overcome as he interacts with Andy. In order to have a satisfying story, someone in your story generally needs to grow, but that someone doesn’t have to be the protagonist. Sometimes the protagonist is there to facilitate the growth of another character, or even the audience itself.

    The classical Disney Princesses actually really understood this principle. Snow White doesn’t have to grow in her narrative, she just has to survive. If Snow White can overcome the wrath of the Evil Queen, then maybe goodness has a chance in this fallen world, and so it becomes the goal of the seven dwarfs, who function like audience inserts, to see that Snow White make it to the end. Again, Belle has a lot more in common with Snow White than the Emma Watson crowd will ever acknowledge.

            There’s an impulse to try relating to "perfect characters," but if we see ourselves in the character who’s just too good for this world, we’re kind of missing the point. Most of us aren’t Dowd, we’re the townsfolk. We’re not Andy, we’re Red. We're not Snow White, we're the seven dwarfs. And, spoiler alert, we’re not Belle.

    Again, I’m not mapping this out to attack Belle or say that she’s a weak character, and I don’t think she’s necessarily missing anything in her story, at least not in the animated film. She's an example of what happens when a person chooses to live with courage and compassion, and I can get behind her as a role model. Belle 1991 makes us want to be more perfect. 

    Emma Watson's Belle, on the other hand, tells us we already are.

A Most Peculiar Mademoiselle

           “Ahead of her time,” is a phrase that pops up both in the text itself and the discourse around the film. The first time we hear it in the remake is in the conversation with Maurice where he tells his daughter that she’s too special for this world and everyone is secretly jealous of his little girl.  

             Basic storytelling guideline: telling everyone your character is good is not half as effective as showing us why they’re good, having the character prove their virtue so we’re not just taking their word for it. If you want a really good example elsewhere from the Disney canon, look at Aladdin. Our first exposure to Aladdin is him stealing his lunch from a system that subjugates and underestimates him. Already, this sets him as kind of an underdog, a disruptive force in his system, which makes him interesting to us as an audience. 

    But more important is the fact that even after that whole dance routine, Aladdin still gives his earnings away to someone who needs it more than he does. We see that even though Aladdin himself stands in need, he still looks out for those who can’t help themselves. When the plot then tells us that this guy is a diamond in the rough, we’re willing to believe it because we’ve seen his altruism with our own eyes. Even Aladdin's remake understood the utility behind this story beat, which is why they were smart to preserve that moment when they adapted the film. (See, remakes don't have to be awful. Sometimes they just choose to be ...)

             Belle teaching a little girl how to read actually might have filled this same need, but even that action was just a means to an end. The scene’s ultimate pay-off is having the villagers band against her and destroy her washing machine while we reflect on how Belle is just too good for this place. The result is that the film highlights Belle’s victimhood rather than her virtue. We don’t remember Belle trying to teach a child to read, we remember Belle opining, “All I wanted was to teach a child to read!”

           The way the remake characterizes the villagers is also telling. Belle in the animated film is certainly an outsider, but the worst things the villagers do to her are gossip about her behind her back and not include her in their ensemble numbers. This is much tamer, but that kind of social isolation can still be really lonely. That’s perfectly ripe ground to make your lead more sympathetic. 

    But in this remake, it’s not enough for Belle to merely be misunderstood, she has to be victimized. Her very existence has to be this act of defiance. Belle’s social circle has to be actively out to get her, and Belle in turn has to react like “me and my washing machine aren’t going anywhere!” (Imagine a version of Harvey where the townspeople try to murder the rabbit.) This is the kind of worldview that makes sense if you're stuck in that adolescent mindset of "everyone's out to get me!" but from the adult side of growing up, it feels infantile in a way I'd never describe the animated film. 

           For further dissonance, see Belle and Gaston’s first interaction. Here, Gaston asks Belle out on a date, and Belle not only turns him down, but gives this deep beleaguered sigh in front of him as she walks off. Interesting acting choice, Watson, playing Belle less like the nerdy girl always in the library and more like the snooty cheerleader who was too cool for those girls. 

    Yes, Gaston becomes the villain in this narrative, but this is well before Gaston does anything evil or even ambiguous, so this isn’t really him getting his comeuppance. This is also nowhere near as boorish as he was in the animated film when Gaston literally tossed Belle’s book in the mud. I see Luke Evans telling Emma Watson that he reads books sometimes and think, “Well, at least he’s trying, I guess.” I don’t think, “How dare you speak to her?!” The remake actually really softens Gaston’s behavior while insisting that Belle is justified in being far ruder to him than she was in the animated film.

    Belle 1991 takes people as they are. This is true of Gaston, the Beast, everyone. Live-action Belle just kinda assumes that she’s better than everyone. And why wouldn’t she? When your entire character is based on being martyred for your virtue, is anyone really good enough for you?

             Slightly less offensive but just as irritating is the way Belle appears to know that there’s a curse at work, and that the curse is somehow tied to the Beast's behavior. The Beast and the servants are never more than one slip-up away from recounting the events of the prologue to Belle. No one seems to care about preserving the integrity of Belle’s love for the Beast. At the same time, she doesn’t seem to need their help in figuring out what’s going on, like when she just casually asks Mrs. Potts and company about something happening when the last petal falls. Even if Belle correctly guessed that the rose was magical, there’s nothing signaling the falling of the petals specifically as this ceremonial event that everyone is anticipating. She just knows because she’s just that smart.

In the animated film, Belle deduced that the castle was enchanted—"these forks are dancing, something’s up"—but the details of the magic are never spelled out for her. She doesn’t know what brought about the curse or that she has the capacity to end it.

             But even if she did somehow connect the dots, I don’t see how that would strengthen her character. Framing it like Belle’s hacked the system and figured out how to turn all the teacups into people probably looks good on her resume, but it robs the action of its virtue. The reason why stories like this are so affecting is that they remind us that goodness without agenda can change the world--change people. Belle didn’t know there was a prize for taming the Beast, she just introduced more kindness into the world, and that kindness ultimately came back to her. 

             I characterize this film's original sin as a misinterpretation of Belle's character, but if I'm being totally honest, that's just a symptom of why this remake actually misses what makes the animated film so legendary. What actually wrecks the 2017 remake of Beauty and the Beast is the way it (unsuccessfully) attempts to boost Belle at the expense of the film's other lead character.

    Remember how I said that Belle wasn't really the central character of the film? Would you like to take a guess at who is?

 

For Who Could Ever Learn to Love a Beast?

             I mentioned briefly that Belle is mostly free from the same controversies that torment other Disney Princesses, but there is one plague that awakens once every generation to terrorize the children before retreating back into its den for its 27-year slumber. I am, of course, referring to the “Beauty and the Beast tells girls they can and should 'fix' bad men” crowd. I don’t want to give this group too much attention because they clearly haven’t been listening to the millions of voices countering their arguments, but this conversation does have some relevance for how Belle is discussed in modern pop culture. 

             This “controversy” all centers on one question: Is Belle the one who changes The Beast?

             On the surface, “yes” seems like the right answer. After all, it was only after Belle entered the Beast’s life that he stopped being such a monster, but Belle was as surprised by this as anyone else. Whatever the Buzzfeed comments say, Belle never set out to purify the Beast through love unfeigned. Early on when Beast is at his worst, she outright says, "I don't want to get to know him. I don't want anything to do with him."

    The thing that changes her mind is the Beast nearly giving his life to save her from the wolves, but Beast did that on his own. And more significantly, Beast did that after a moment of recognition and accountability, when he realizes that he made a grave mistake by lashing out at Belle. As the Beast continues to take a proactive role in his life and reveal a nobler side of himself, Belle is naturally inclined to warm up to him, but Beast took that first step.

    Because the film hinges on the Beast's transformation, and because we see typically view "Beauty and the Beast" as Belle's story, the discourse sometimes backs itself into a corner. If Belle is the hero of the story, then you kind of have to argue that, yeah, the movie does put the responsibility on Belle to "fix" the Beast. But, as I previously argued, Disney's Belle doesn't have a character arc. The Beast, on the other hand, very clearly does. 

    This is interesting because The Beast in the original fairy-tale didn't really need to become a "better person." The onus was on Beauty to see that she could love this hideous but gentle creature. As I noted in my survey of Beauty and the Beast film adaptations, the notion of Beast needing a redemption arc at all is arguably the thing that separates the Disney version from the original fairy-tale, or even other adaptations of the story. 

           If Disney's Belle is basically Maria from The Sound of Music meets Anna from The King and I, then The Beast is sort of a mixture of Jean Valjean and the Phantom of the Opera. The Beast speaks to a part of us that wishes we were better but feels prisoner to our own worst tendencies. He recognizes his own monsterhood, but feels unable to break the cycle. When I hear the average person talking about how Beauty and the Beast feels so much more adult and intelligent than your standard cartoon, I very much believe this is what they’re talking about.

   Early on there seemed to be the idea that the best way to make Belle and Beast feel like a natural match was to have them mirror one another as outcasts in their respective elements: Belle was a non-conformist bookworm, Beast was a literal monster. The difference being that for The Beast, his status as an outsider would be typified not just by how his environment treated him, but by his flaws as a character, and the story would hinge on his growth.

    If the biggest champion for Belle as a character was Linda Woolverton, then the mastermind behind The Beast was lyricist Howard Ashman (which is itself interesting given that The Beast sings all of one stanza in the animated film). Ashman was critical in the story development with building up The Beast as a character on equal footing to Beauty in large part because he really came to see himself in the Beast. Lots of people have speculated why, the most common hypothesis being that as a gay man in the 80s, Ashman would have certainly known what it was like to be a sensitive soul in a world that only wanted to see you as a monster. (Ashman would pass away from AIDS complications during the production of Beauty and the Beast and never saw the completed film.)

And you can feel Ashman's contributions to the story through the Beast. In some ways, Beast fits the bill of protagonist better than Belle ever did. He not only has a clear character arc born out of a clear character flaw, he's also actively shaping the plot. Belle is the one who sets the plot in motion by making a deal to stay in the castle, sure, but all the major plot points that follow hinge on actions taken by the Beast. (Saving Belle from the wolves, letting Belle go.) And the story makes much more sense when you look at it from his perspective.

           It’s fair to say that Beast likely would have never broken the curse without Belle’s help, but the change itself came from the Beast. Belle was probably the first person to really call out the Beast for his behavior, and she provided a model of goodness for him, but no one made the Beast save Belle from the wolves, no one made the Beast release Belle so she could go back to her father, and no one made him spare Gaston’s life. Belle’s part came from giving the Beast his second chance after he started changing.

I’ll repeat: Belle doesn’t fix the Beast. The Beast fixes the Beast.

             But if we’re operating under the assumption that Belle is this perfect entity who cleanses everything she touches, then it’s not enough for the Beast’s internal transformation to happen without Belle somehow initiating it. If the arc of the film is Beast learning to be a good person, and Belle is the central fixture of the film, then the Beast’s transformation has to be Belle’s doing. And so the film plays the Beast’s transformation like it’s just another one of Belle’s victories, like she’s the one changing the Beast, and the dissonance is impossible to ignore.

             Let’s track how both films develop Belle and Beast’s relationship, starting from the very beginning: 

    Belle and Beast’s first encounter has to be important because this is where the Beast’s transformation begins. The Beast won’t really turn a corner until halfway through the film, but the seeds are planted early on. Note in the animated film when Belle offers to take her father’s place, the Beast’s first reaction is one of surprise. His fearsome exterior softens for a moment. We already see that Belle is having some kind of influence on him.

             There’s a similar moment that happens a little later when Belle is crying in the dungeon after her father is taken, and she weeps about how the Beast didn’t even let her say goodbye. Belle doesn’t see, but Beast shows some insecurity in the moment, indicating that he actually recognizes this was a bad decision. If we’re going to believe this guy can one day become a good person, we have to know upfront that there is some ember of goodness in him that could be nurtured. This is made very clear in the animated film: it’s ignored entirely in the remake. We don’t see how Belle’s selflessness stirs any latent goodness buried in his heart. We don’t see Beast react to it all. We just acknowledge Belle’s perfectitude and move on. Consistently, the film presents the narrative's turning points as opportunities for Belle to flash her virtue while robbing its other lead character of his necessary moments in the spotlight.

            See also: the scene when Beast lets Belle leave. When Watson’s Belle says that her father will die on his own, there’s about a half-second pause before Beast is like “K, fine. You can go save him, I guess.” 

       Compare that to the animated film, where this moment is given much more visual weight. After Belle tells Beast, “He may be dying, and he’s all alone!” we enter a new close-up frame of The Beast cradling the rose, the symbol of his enslavement, and we see him actually process the moment. There’s a few seconds’ pause before Beast finally lets Belle go. This pause gives the audience that chance to trace out the full psychology of the Beast’s headspace. You actually see in his eyes the moment when Beast decides to do the right thing. The animated film works so well because it not only tracks its own emotional development but also knows how to visually represent it.

             I’m not saying the remake had to translate these moments shot for shot, tit for tat. There are any number of ways the film could have communicated information had they wanted to, but I don’t think for a moment that they did because that’s not the point. Disney didn't greenlight this movie because they felt like making a character study of one of their most complex characters. They did so because "Belle was the first good Disney Princess" ...

              Even more than the needless cosmetics they apply to Belle, this careless reduction of Beast's character explains why the 2017 remake has so much empty space. The animated movie gets by having a rather thin dramatic tension for its female lead because the tension for its male lead is so rich. Disney will never play the film from his angle, not as long as Belle is their one link to the cool kids' table, but what is Beauty and the Beast without the Beast?

    Thanks to the 2017 remake, we don't have to wonder.

For Once, It Might Be Grand …

             Disney didn’t start to really explore female psychology until really recently. Even more recently than I think even the Emma Watson crowd would think. It’s only been in the last five or so years that we’ve regularly seen Disney invest in female leads with clearly delineated character arcs and flaws. 

            Judy from Zootopia has all the pluckiness and optimism of your standard Disney leading lady, but she’s also shown to be somewhat judgmental and impatient. More significantly, a major plot point centers on Judy carrying latent prejudice, latent prejudice that creates significant hurt for her community, which she then has to atone for. A major element of Judy’s character is acknowledging that even someone as “pure of heart” as her has a responsibility to make self-reflection and improvement a part of her life mission.

          A few years later, Raya and the Last Dragon featured a leading lady with a deep anger toward the world at large. At the start of her quest, she doesn’t even care about saving the world—she just wants her dad back. But Raya evolves into a heroine when she finally does what no one else will and puts her trust in Namaari. Raya is allowed a fuller emotional range, and with it the chance to experience true growth. 

             Once the Disney Princess brand was formalized, there grew an expectation to have its honorees be not just characters but role models. Disney princesses aren’t allowed any character flaw aside from just needing to b e l i e v e in themselves more. What makes heroines like Judy and Raya so interesting is blocked by this overarching tendency to cast someone like Belle as the be-all end-all role model for kids, especially little girls. It doesn’t escape my notice that neither Judy nor Raya are branded Disney Princesses. 

            There could have been a really interesting remake where we really dug into the psychology of Belle’s character, found out what frustrated her, what made her scared, and allow her to overcome these things in a rousing character arc to match that of her male costar. Doing so might have also compelled the writers to really ask not just why Belle was virtuous enough to purify the castle, but what a relationship with Beast had to offer her. Maybe explain why the castle wasn't just a territory she conquers but a place where she eventually finds the home she yearned for in her poor provincial village. But, again, Belle’s humanness is not the point. The point is Belle is perfect.

             The remake takes very few departures from its source material, but these small changes are the movie's undoing. No small feat for a film that is entirely without subtlety. Early on in the production of this remake, the creative heads decided this wasn’t the story about love as a purifying force, or about the natural consequences of living your best self. It was a victory lap. The remake thinks it's giving Disney fans exactly what they want, but all it manages to do is turn the Tale as Old as Time into exactly what detractors have always said it was: pretty colors, syrupy sentiment, and no emotional core.

   Anyways, if Disney wants to consult with me before they start screwing up the Snow White remake, they can find me here.

        --The Professor